"Many products possess strengths that go unmessaged – communicating them is faster than creating new products."
Strategyn CEO Tony Ulwick



For an in-depth look at this subject, see chapter 6 in What Customers Want.



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Reposition Current Offerings

Once a company has targeted the best opportunities, it has three key options for growth. The sixth step in Strategyn’s eight-step methodology covers the first of these options.

It is not uncommon for a company to discover that its products address one or more underserved outcomes but that it has failed to properly communicate that value to the customer. When possible, a company should adjust its communications and messaging to emphasize how its current products and services address these underserved outcomes. Changing its messaging to focus on this value is often enough to boost revenue and market share.

To ensure that the optimal messaging is created, Strategyn applies its outcome-driven methodology to the positioning of existing products, new products, and company brands. Knowledge of customers' outcomes—so critical for other aspects of innovation—is equally critical when it comes to positioning and messaging effectively.

As part of the positioning activity, we help companies evaluate whether or not focusing on customers' emotional jobs (as opposed to their functional jobs) should be part of the strategy. Strategyn’s research indicates that companies should stay focused on functional messaging when their product is functionally complex and has low emotional appeal (as is the case with medical devices and financial services, for example) and that companies should focus on both function and emotion when they are in an industry that makes products that define the customer's persona (as is the case with clothing and automobiles, for example).

Strategyn has also created a tool that finds the correlation between a particular emotional job and the functional components that support it. This makes it possible to select an emotional message and support it with the function that reinforces the message. Conversely, it makes it possible to determine what emotional jobs correlate with big opportunities in the marketplace, thereby making it possible to add value and support it with emotional appeal.

8-Step Methodology

1. Formulate Innovation Strategy
 
2. Capture Customer Inputs
 
3. Identify Broad Market Opportunities
 
4. Identify Segments of Opportunity
 
5. Target Specific Opportunities

6. Reposition Current Offerings
 
7. Prioritize Development Pipeline

8. Define Breakthrough Concepts